Generally, I don’t think we’ll see J20 defendants taking the stand, because a skilled prosecutor could hang them with their own words. Thus the Leftist webzine Truthout recently quoted Carlo Piantini, a defendant in a later J20 trial, at length:

“Charges like these are intended to silence communities when the time comes for people to resist, whether that be the activist community, the anarchist community, or any other. How are people expected to be brave enough to resist when the consequences could be a lifetime of incarceration? Never mind the beatings from the police. When taking the streets and demonstrating could mean facing concussion grenades, jail cells infested with roaches, and the promise of eight felony charges, who is going to stand up and fight back? These charges are intended to keep people afraid, indoors and obedient. And this case itself is intended to set the precedent for all of this.’"

“Jail cells infested with roaches…” Jail cells with roaches, oh my! Get down with the people, brother! They live with roaches. Don’t be an elitist.

As for Pianatini’s fear that this case will “set a precedent”, one can only hope. But note that police and prosecutors enforcing the law has now become a radical idea—kind of like enforcing the America’s immigration laws.

There were even crazier sections in the Truthout article, such as “Comparing Charlottesville to J20: A Case Study in Hypocrisy.” CultMarx Enforcer Steele again quotes Piantini:

"The resistance that took place on J20 was not beneficial to the state; the white-supremacist violence that took place in Charlottesville was. This country has always been a colonial, white-supremacist project, and the Trump regime rode its way into power by renormalizing explicit white-nationalism."

Putting aside the fact that the Alt Right protestors held without bail in Charlottesville (still) are not rioters but political prisoners, Steele’s assertion that the authorities were “hypocritical” presupposes that the same authority—none other than Donald J. Trump—was in control in both instances.

But Trump wasn’t even president when the police strategy and assignments for the Inauguration were decided. He wouldn’t have had any authority regarding the D.C. Metro Police anyway. And prosecutorial decisions were made by a black diversity-oriented Obama appointee, U.S. Attorney Channing D. Phillips. In Charlottesville, policing and prosecutorial decisions were made by black supremacists City Manager Maurice Jones and Police Chief Al Thomas, and the Leftist Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office (there was then no CA).

Similarly, future J20 defendant Elizabeth Ariadne Lagesse was lovingly showcased in the New York Times:

[A]s Inauguration Day approached, I became so disgusted by President-elect Donald Trump’s behavior that I felt it would have been negligent to remain a bystander. So I traveled from Baltimore to join hundreds of thousands [sic] of protesters at counterdemonstrations around Mr. Trump’s swearing-in.

Little did I know that I would be swept up into a legal nightmare that demonstrates how prosecutors intimidate and manipulate defendants into giving up their rights….

In addition to seizing the contents of at least 100 cellphones, prosecutors secured broad warrants for Facebook pages and records relating to a political organizing website.

That Lagesse would not want prosecutors to be able to search her cellphone, DisruptJ20, or Facebook pages (presumably those limited to a private group) makes perfect sense… if she’s guilty of the charges against her.

She had some self-serving criticisms of the criminal justice system:

The trouble starts with the indictment process, in which prosecutors present their case to a grand jury in secret…

[a] lawsuit filed on behalf of me and three other plaintiffs by the American Civil Liberties Union. (One of this case’s many paradoxes is that I’ve been advised not to talk publicly about what happened before my arrest.)”

Lagesse better avoid getting called to the witness stand in her own defense. Otherwise, prosecutors will force her to come up with a story about what she was doing just “before my arrest.”

Since Trump wasn’t yet President, his only “behavior” that could have “disgusted” her was in his beating Hillary Clinton against astronomical odds. The only “disgusting behavior” I’m aware of between the election and the inauguration, was that of Democrats seeking to undo the election and make it impossible for the new president to govern.

At this first major J20 trial, a commenter at the Washington Post’s report suggested that the furious note-taking during juror voir dire by Alt Left court spectators was to collect information on each juror sufficient to “dox” him and thereby destroy his life.

Certainly Judge Leibowitz gave the appearance of being exceedingly rigorous, sitting at a table right by where each prospective juror was undergoing voir dire, and looking in the witness’ eyes. Some attorneys even asked her to please move, because the prospective juror was speaking very softly, and they couldn’t hear him. She refused.

Judge Leibovitz asked each prospective juror what their views were on the reliability of testimony by a policeman. If they testified that they put more faith in a cop’s than a civilian’s word, she immediately dismissed them.

Reports on the session insinuated that the judge would also immediately bounce prospective jurors who testified that they put less stock in cops’ testimony… but didn’t report her doing so.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennifer Kerkhoff countered that the defendants continued to walk with the rioters, after the latter had wreaked mayhem. If they were in disagreement with the rioters’ tactics, she argued, they were obligated to separate from them, the way other demonstrators did, who were not charged.

Kerkhoff said there was video that showed the co-defendants changing out of their black clothes and removing their masks to avoid capture, an effort, she said, that proved they were connected with the rioting.

AUSA Jennifer Kerkhoff has an uphill battle. Over 40 years of de-policing and prosecutorial laxity has led millions of Americans to believe that all sorts of crimes are legal.

And the defendants may have a secret weapon: Judge Leibovitz. A judge can easily sabotage a prosecution, while putting on a “rigorous” trial, for example in the Knoxville Horror trials.

I’ll be following these trials for VDARE.com

Nicholas Stix [email him] is a New York City-based journalist and researcher, much of whose work focuses on the nexus of race, crime, and education. He spent much of the 1990s teaching college in New York and New Jersey. His work has appeared in Chronicles, The New York Post, Weekly Standard, Daily News, New York Newsday, American Renaissance, Academic Questions,Ideas on Liberty and many other publications. Stix was the project director and principal author of the NPI report, The State of White America-2007. He blogs atNicholas Stix, Uncensored.